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Baltic States Review - Naval - 1947

Executive Summary
The militaries of Latvia and Lithuania are a bit out of date, due mostly to the absence of past players. In some cases, new equipment has been built but not put in the encyclopedia; in other cases, equipment has been put in the encyclopedia but was never built. I've gone through the archives to try to make an accurate accounting of the various items covering the Baltic States, and I intend to sum everything up the encyclopedia.

I believe some sim reports are necessary in order to bring their naval forces up to date. Additionally, I am going to address select land and air purchases to demonstrate continuing progress. This post covers the naval aspect of this update.

LatviaOverview
Latvia's current force structure is somewhat overbuilt, with a large variety of ship classes within the same type. Manpower requirements are clearly a major burden: if every ship remains in commission, seventy-four hundred men are required to take them to sea. Clearly, this fleet is a significant burden on Latvia's fiscal structure.

There are a number of older ships that are antiquated and need to be scrapped. For example, Latvia acquired three well-used Leone-class destroyers from Italy. These ships shall be immediately scrapped due to their antiquity. There is a class of ex-Yugoslavian, ex-SAE submarines of similar age; these deathtraps are going to the razors before they kill anybody.

After TexasCowboy's departure, AdmK ran Latvian reports for a tad bit, and during that time laid down a new cruiser and some destroyers. Some of these ships are incomplete as of the last sim reports (1943ish), but would have been completed since then. The sim reports for the destroyers were posted, but the unnamed cruiser was not.

I have been able to account for a total of fourteen Latvian destroyers as of the last sim reports, although I encountered some confusion about names. I think the best way of dealing with the situation is to lay out in this post the ships which definitely exist:
---- Five Varonis-class destroyers from 1933: Varonis, Milet, Vermele, Tomats, Krievija
---- One Pieplitisa-class destroyer (from 1938)
---- One Neuzvarem-class destroyer (from 1938)
---- Three Leone-class destroyers (from 1918): Leone, Tigre, Panthera
---- Four Ronis-class destroyers (from 1940-43): Ronis, Spidola, Unnamed, Unnamed

I propose to name the final two ships, unnamed in sim reports, as Visvaldis and Talivaldis.

A light cruiser (9x15cm guns) was laid down in 1941 for the Latvian Navy, presumably to replace the ancient Chester and Birkenhead, which had ended up in Latvian service before they were dumped on Russia. This is a small but nice little light cruiser. I found the sim attached to the sim reports, but it never appeared in the encyclopedia, so I re-attach it here, and shall post it to the encyclopedia during the update. I propose to assign it the name Virsaitis.

Manpower Reduction
Of course, this is just gaining an accurate accounting of what's been done, and leaves the issue of the Latvian Naval Force being oversized and expensive to man. I'd like to propose the following plan:
- Following the acquisition of light cruiser Virsaitis, the coast defense ship Riga is moved to the reserve. A caretaker crew of 88 men is assigned, which keeps the ship in a state of limited readiness; summer training cruises with reservists are undertaken; manpower savings of 490 men (transferred to form the core of the Virsaitis crew).
- Leone-class destroyers are scrapped, drawing down 756 men.
- Six Afrika-class submarines are scrapped, drawing down 198 men.
- Four of the five Baltkreivija-class torpedo boats are disarmed and sold / scrapped. These torpedo boats were nice enough for the 1930s, but have no margin for refit of radar or other important electronics. One ship shall be retained for sea-training purposes. Manpower savings of 328 men.
- The destroyers of the Varonis and Pieplitisa classes are sold to Russia (5 + 1 ships total). This results in a manpower savings of 1,287 men. See below for discussion of the purchase details.

This results in an overall manpower reduction of 3059 men - bringing the fleet down to a more manageable 4,372 men in active sea duty. I feel this is still a major burden on a country which only has a population of about two million. In other words, about one adult out of every five hundred serves in the Latvian Naval Service. This is not an unreasonable expense in and of itself, but it starts to become one when the Army and Air Force need to be tallied into national defense expenditures.

Improvement Plan:
- Two minelayers of the Sahta class to be modernized with radar (Level 1 refit, 50 tons cost).
- Four destroyers of the Ronis class to be fully-modernized to 1947 standards (Level ?? Alteration, __ tons)..
- One destroyer-leader of the Neuzvarum class (to be renamed Varonis II) to be modernized to same standards as Ronis.
- Light cruiser Virsaitis to receive electronics refit to update radar (Level 0 Minor Alteration, ~164 tons).
- Patrol boats of the Herons-class (five vessels) to be receive modernization.
- One refit of the torpedo boat Baltkreivija to serve as a small training ship.
- Five Continental-class submarines to be modernized.

Ship Sales:
I propose to sell the five Varonis and one Pieplitisa-class destroyer to the Russians, who will pay for the ships by funding up to 3,700 tons worth of Latvian refits and new construction for 1947, as well as permitting Latvia use of Russian slips and drydocks (which is actually quite important for the purposes of scrapping and refits). Any tonnage unused for these purposes will be paid off at the end off in December 1947.

For accounting clarity, I am basically proposing that the Russians will buy Pieplitisa for 700 tons, and each Varonis for 600 tons each, for a total of 3,700 tons.

Expenditures
At present, Latvia's naval infrastructure is composed of 1x Class 2 drydock, 1x Class 2 slip, 2x Class 0 drydocks, and 1x Class 1 slip. For 1947, I am going to put Latvia's full production into infrastructure in order to build a Class 1 floating dry-dock, which will be able to conduct refits and repairs to Latvia's destroyer fleet without tying down the big drydock in Riga.

LithuaniaOverview
In terms of naval expenditures, Lithuania actually seems to be in a pretty cozy position, with a fleet composed of four Vytis-class minelayer-destroyers, the flag-destroyer Aukstatis, minelayer Jotvingis, and four Kaunas-class patrol boats. Two icebreakers, two naval tugs, and a smattering of light combatants round out the mix. I feel like this is a pretty strong force for a nation that has relatively little coastline to protect, particularly with regards to Lithuania's recent history: their emphasis should remain on land warfare, as I shall discuss in the relevant posts on that topic.

The encyclopedia indicates that Atlantean-designed Torto-class escort cruisers were purchased or built, but in fact this never happened. (I had advised Agent to build a viable Lithuanian Naval Service prior to starting the coast defense ships, which he did - but no further work was ever done at that point.) Since Lithuania has so little coastline, I don't believe it is particularly necessary for their naval service to sink money into building these vessels.

However, one area that Lithuania finds itself lacking is in minesweeping capability. No minesweepers were ever built during the 1930s, and thus mine warfare rests entirely with the antiquated Presidentas Smetona, a ship well past its prime. I think a quartet of light minesweepers to replace the Smetona (which in turn would be retired) would be useful.

Improvement Plan:
- Four Vytis-class destroyer-minelayers will be refitted with new engines and electronics (Level 4 Partial Reconstruction, 500 tons each).
- Aukstatis to undergo a similar refit in 1948 once all Vytis-class ships are refitted.
- Four minesweepers of ~500 tons to be constructed.

As a first step to rectify the long-standing gaps in the Baltic States, this seems a reasonable effort. Both forces are to the high end of the spectrum for their amount of coastline they have but far more reasonable than some of the expansive ideas formerly held by the players. I agree that Lithuania could use some minesweepers/local escorts/coast guards - perhaps something akin to a German Raumboote.

Vytis-class, Lithuanian Destroyer-Minelayer laid down 1935 (Engine 1947)
With the 1947 refit, Vytis receives new machinery and a full electronics suite. Armament remains the same, with three twin 130mm mountings of Atlantean origin, and four twin Atlantean 40mm cannons; however, the upgraded fire-control system provides a higher degree of accuracy. One ship was refitted per quarter over the course of 1947.

A quick question for clarification on the cruiser. The sim lists the 100mm guns as straightforward DP; the miscellaneous weight makes allowances for automatic DP mounts. There looks to be a disconnect, at least to me.

I presume they're the Russian semi-automatic dual-purpose 100mm guns, which in some sims had extra weight assigned for automation. Like I said - I made no changes to the report; I'm just re-posting it.

I presume they're the Russian semi-automatic dual-purpose 100mm guns, which in some sims had extra weight assigned for automation. Like I said - I made no changes to the report; I'm just re-posting it.

Okay - that would explain it - I presumed you might have done the original sim.

Nope - the only thing I've done with this ship was giving it a name, which it was sorely lacking.

Heh. The story is told that during the Second World War that USN signals intelligence had identified the existence of a Japanese cruiser but they could not determine its name. So for the longest time it was logged in the enemy order of battle as "No Name" - which after awhile became Japanized as Noname, No-na(y)-me.

So I went to do my Q4/47 Russian sim report a few weeks back and got held up because of their defense assistance to Latvia. I finally cleared my plate on that one, and now I should be able to finish things off quickly.

As the postings from above-and-long-ago indicated that Latvia was going to refit the Varonis II, their destroyer squadron leader built in 1938. However, for some reason I never actually bothered simming a refit. So here's what we've got. You can find the original sim here.

The original ship had some things which I didn't really care to alter, but which no longer fit the needs of the Latvian fleet. The ship always possessed a very heavy armament of eight Atlantean-made 13cm guns, and ten Russian 65cm torpedoes in two quintuple launchers. Both of these weapons systems are now completely unique to this ship. Varonis might've had radar - maybe - but it wasn't much at the time, and it isn't up to the standards even of the smaller Ronis class, which has some relatively new Russian sets provided under the Defense Assistance.

Therefore, in this reconstruction, the Latvians are:
- Modernizing the engines
- Replacing the Atlantean 13cm guns with Russian 13cm guns (standardization)
- Replacing the Russian 65cm torpedoes with 53cm torpedoes (standardization)
- Losing one of the torpedo launchers for some additional cabin capacity
- Reorganizing the AA mountings (drop in number of barrels, improvement in arcs)
- Across-the-board increase in miscellaneous weight
- Addition of air-search, surface-search, and fire-control radars for the 13cm guns (provided by Russia, matching Ronis)
- New sonar/asdic (since the ship's already in drydock)